Interview with PrettyPriMe - Bringing the Boom on a Professional Level

Posted by Obey Alliance on October 20, 2017

After his impressive performance in the Fall Split, Emil “PrettyPriMe” Edstrom has once again proven himself as one of the best mid laners in the world. He’s broken the meta wide open, giving his enemies a smile as he beats them down with gods the SPL hadn’t seen for a while, such as Raijin and Janus. I was able to chat with the bandana-wearing extraordinaire for a bit about his origins as a mid laner and his feelings about the current state of his role.

What got you interested in playing mid?

“I played mid in every other MOBA I played before Smite. I’m a mid main, so to speak. Don’t really know what it goes back to, but ever since I played DOTA with my friends, I was mainly a midlaner”

When you first got into competitive, did you have any role models?

“Day9, a former StarCraft II pro. He just has a really good attitude about how you should always strive to improve and look forward. Awesome guy in general, really good story. He’s my biggest role model, I’d say.”

Did you have any role models in Smite, too?

“Not really, honestly. I watched one major tournament before I joined my team back then, which was the Launch Tournament where TSM won. After that, I started playing a lot. There wasn’t a lot of role-modeling to be done since Smite was so new.”

What do you like most about mid?

“I like the gods you get to play with big game changing ults and generally very interesting kits. A lot of the stuff you get to play do very different things, and that’s what I find the most interesting.”

Is there anything about yourself that makes you feel like you belong in mid?

“I’m good at reading people, I would say. As the people person I am, I’m also good at noticing patterns.”

Do you find that your team likes to put you in a certain role/job within the variety of mages?

“Yeah, in general, I play big burst backline mages like Vulcan, Zeus, Ra, and Thoth. But in Smite, I think it’s very important to adapt to what is good right now and change your godpool accordingly”

So what’s the story behind your Raijin obsession? So many people thought he was awful coming into the Fall Split, but you’ve clearly changed their minds.

“I played him a lot before he got nerfed back in the day. I always found his kit very fun, mostly because he was one of the mages that can jump in and engage. But he got some changes and people are just very slow at changing their minds. I think he was totally fine two buffs ago, but he just kept on getting stronger, so I think we need to see more adapting from players when things change in the game. I think it’s generally just slow adaptation from other players”

Definitely true. Speaking of adaptations, you guys did a ton of that in the split. How do you think it went?

“I think the split went very well, considering we also hooked up a new solo laner in Xaliea. So we had to adjust a bit, but to be fair, we didn’t really have to adjust too much since he filled in pretty well.”

Is there anything you, personally, or your team as a whole need to work on before Super Regionals?

“Maybe I have to extend and play more gods than only the drummer for Regionals, but maybe I’ll just keep on getting him. But we should keep trying new stuff out and trying to see if we can improve somehow, but nothing specific”

I know you guys are going to give it your all! So let’s talk more about mid as a role. What kinds of players make the best mid laners?

“Being the right amount of a team player and selfish is a very important quality. You need to know when to help and when run, when to farm and when to fight, and being as annoying as you can while being able to get away with it. You need to be able to do what the team needs you to do without doubting it.”

If you had to boil mid down to three words, what would they be and why?

“Practice, planning and precision. You need to hit your abilities first of all, so that’s precision. And guess practice is a bit of a filler cause that would go for whatever role you would ever like to play. But yeah, in order to get really good at anything, you have to practice a whole lot. And planning is more that you need to know what you’re doing for the next five seconds. The more seconds, the better, but you need to always plan ahead and know what your next step is. Always mind your surroundings, as Ra’s al Ghul said.”

What’s the most common mistake you see other mids make in ranked and/or competitive?

“I think rotating too much is the most common ranked mistake, but I can’t speak for competitive really since all teams work differently.”

So when is the best time to rotate? Or are there any signs as to whether or not making a rotation will be good?

“There's no clear way to know besides when the enemy mid backs. It gives you room to rotate without losing anything. Other than that, I would say that the important thing is to never rotate to a lost fight.”

What do you think are the best ways for mid laners to learn?

“Just look at what you specifically could have done better in every game you play. It’s a team game, but at least when playing to rank up, you can only really look at yourself and see what you could have done better. Sometimes you will have weird stuff going on around you and you just gotta handle it.”

Do you have any shoutouts you want to make?

“I would like to thank the people for all their support. Also shoutout to my dapper lady, Irina!”

Make sure to check out and follow Prime on Twitter and Twitch! He streams almost daily and likes to play a variety of games on stream, including Smite, Darkest Dungeon, Hearthstone, and Cuphead!